Mists of Pandaria

This trademark filing has been getting a lot of attention today. T’is said that the code numbers used are ones only used for actual games, rather than books or comics. The implication being that Mists of Pandaria is going to be the next World of Warcraft expansion. At any rate, that’s the assumption that a whole lot of gaming sites are running with.

While Mists of Pandaria sounds intriguing, I find it hard to believe that World of Warcraft is going to base its 4th expansion around anthropomorphic panda. Or as they like to call them, Pandaren.

A shame, because it would be pretty awesome if they did, but it doesn’t feel very serious. Not enough sorrow, death, corruption, and despair for a WoW expansion plotline. While I suppose you *could* put incredibly cute pandafolk into a horrible story, I’m not sure our heartstrings could take it.

My suspicion is that the title has been trademarked just to wind the players up, as Pandaren have featured in several of Blizzard’s April Fools stunts. How many times must they tell us that Pandaren are going to be the next race before people start looking at this stuff a little more cynically? A fun little game for the iPhone released next April, maybe, but the next expansion? No.

The picture below is of some completely unrelated, though equally cute, pandamen in EQ2, showing Maltheas the ways of Tai Chi, in the village of the Hua Mein.